Student Congress candidates run unopposed

Contested races with more than one candidate include freshman class president and vice president and sophomore class president, vice president and treasurer. Thirty-eight seats have no candidates, so the SA executive cabinet will have to appoint officers for those positions.

Adam Andrade, the only candidate for representative of the College of Business and Administration, said he wasn’t surprised at the lack of upperclassmen participation because upperclassmen are closer to graduating into the “real world.” Andrade, a junior political science and business management major from Fort Worth, said if he hadn’t already planned on running for office, he wouldn’t have known about the SA information meeting. He said he didn’t think the information meeting was as well-advertised as previous election years.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Andrade said. “As a political science major, we understand that apathy is a very real thing. For whatever reason people just lose interest, they often forget, or they choose not to.”

Shelby Short, the only woman running for freshman class president against two men, said she campaigned using flyers, social media, candy with “Vote for Shelby Short” papers and face-to-face campaigning. Short, engineering major from Caddo Mills, said she has only seen her opponents using face-to-face methods of campaigning.

“It just really is an open race right now, outside of the executive offices,” Short said. “As far as the freshman class, when it comes to Res halls and stuff like that there’s not a lot of people that went out there to run for that.”

Short said while petitioning to run for office, she noticed many freshmen were hesitant to write down their banner IDs.

Until this year, freshmen could participate in campus activities by applying for the Freshman Action Council. The group of about 30 students served under Caddie Coupe, director of Student Activities and Parents, and received funding from SA to plan events like monthly devos, Freshman Christmas Social and Freshman Formal.

“Student government is now trying to do more events on campus,” Coupe said. “We decided to restructure FAC in that instead of doing it on both ends, let’s really work with those students that want to be involved, that have chosen to be a part of SA.”

Instead of the Freshmen Action Council, freshmen class representatives will work with Coupe to continue freshmen events and work with SA to create larger events.

At the same time, all students can apply for the Campus Activities Board, a group of five students paid a stipend to plan events like the movies in Cullen and the annual hypnotist show. Three students will be hired by Coupe and two will be appointed by the SA executive cabinet. Students can apply by Sept. 24 at acu.edu/campusoffices/studentlife/nsp/leadership.